[MCR] French Creek / North Ghost

Information a little old, but better than nothing.

051203 – French Creek
Went bush wacking up French Creek in search of snow and solitude on Saturday.  Strong winds up high all day with lots of transport.  Witnessed 2 natural avalanches, large 2.5’s off of the face above the French Creek ice climbs, powder clouds made it to valley floor but debris stopped short, both occurred about 5 minutes from each other around 10:30am Saturday AM.  Large fracture lines visible, both slides were no doubt due to the extensive wind transport occurring at ridge top.   Didn’t find any skiing but did find those 3 ice climbs that Tom was talking about a while back. Sporty travel due to the thin snowpack.  Encountered a large heard of Mountain Goats, probably 25+ in the heard.

051204 – North Ghost: This House of Sky
Bitterly cold with gusty winds most of the day.  No one around except all the heavy machinery working on the flood plains in the river basin proper.  Extremely brittle ice on the first 2 short steps then progressively wetter the higher you climb, to the point of running water over ice on the last couple of steps.  Combined with the temps it made for cable rope and club like gloves.  Very well formed and the ice at the back of the bowl is huge this year.

GBU, Unforgiven, Angle Tears all in and fat.  Big drip is well... Big.  Silver Tongue Devil is fully formed but looks like a good workout with a short break in the ice about half way.  Burning Drowning is in and big, Sliver is there but a little anemic.  Quite a few tracks going farther back tot he Valley of the Sun area I would assume.  Didn’t get a good look at the Valley of the Birds approach, but would assume that it is in and fat with they way everything else was looking.

We walked up to the base of Phantom falls , it is barely there but there is ice the whole way.  Stubby screws for the start then it would be sporty until the pins at the overlap.  We didn’t climb it.

Access is the easiest I’ve seen it since I started going to the Ghost.  Brand new bridge at the start of the gravel road, the entire road has been grated including the big hill, access over the flood plains of the Ghost river is easy with all the heavy equipment working on the outwash areas.  The 2 creek crossings were straight forward, although the first one was deeper than it looked.


Ian Tomm